The present invention relates generally to a system for drug distribution to health care providers, and more particularly, the present invention relates to a system for drug information transfer, drug inventory management, and drug packaging, resulting in a unique system of drug distribution.
It has been known for health care providers, such as hospitals, to have a pharmacist or pharmacy department within the hospital to coordinate the dispensing of drugs to the patients of the health care institution. The pharmacists in such health care institutions have long been burdened with the increasingly complex record keeping and inventory management that results from hospitals caring for hundreds, if not thousands of patients every day. Various methods have been employed to assist a hospital's pharmacist or pharmacy department with maintaining accurate records while attempting to reduce the burden of managing all of the information associated with drug distribution. The pharmacist's responsibility has included: filling individual patient prescriptions on a daily basis; maintaining sufficient inventory of each drug in order to have enough quantities of the drug in hospital stock to administer to patients on a daily basis; tracking of drug interactions to prevent a patient from being given a drug that has adverse affects when combined with other drugs; accounting for the purchase of drugs for use in the hospital; accounting associated with the giving of drugs to individual patients; distributing the drugs to the appropriate nursing stations within the hospital to suit each station's daily demands; tracking of drug expiration dates to rid inventories of expired drugs; and tracking of drug lot numbers, for example in the event of a recall of a particular drug.
In recent years hospitals have been assisted with drug distribution management by the introduction of drug dispensing machines, such as the machines described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,014,875, entitled, Medication Dispenser Station and U.S. Pat. No. 5,460,294, entitled, Single Dose Pharmaceutical Dispenser Subassembly. Drug dispensing machines have effectively created branches of the hospital pharmacy department at each nursing station where the dispensing machines are located. The dispensing machines are frequently arranged to be electronically connected to a central computer system within the pharmacy department for tracking drugs that were to be administered to patients in that particular patient care area of the hospital. In this manner, hospitals have improved the manner in which drugs are dispensed to patients and the record keeping required by the pharmacy department has been simplified somewhat by each patient care area electronically reporting the variety and quantities of drugs dispensed from each drug dispensing machine.
Health care providers, such as hospitals, have traditionally purchased drugs from drug distributors, in bulk quantities (e.g., 100 single dose units of a particular variety of drug). While hospitals have purchased drugs in bulk due to manufacturer availability and then offered by the drug distributor, drugs are nevertheless dispensed at the health care institution on a patient-by-patient basis in low dose quantities. Therefore, hospitals have had to purchase and maintain large quantities of drugs until the drugs were eventually dispensed to the patients. Inventory turnover of drugs is usually measured in days, weeks or more. During such time, the hospitals have had to incur the associated expense of carrying this large inventory of drugs. Frequently, the result has been independent management of such large quantities, including unexplained loss of portions of the drugs in inventory, and even theft of portions of the inventory. In addition, the pharmacy department of the hospital has had the extra burden of tracking the drugs dispensed for patient use, as well as tracking the drugs that the pharmacy is carrying in its inventory.
The present invention is designed to overcome several of the above mentioned problems associated with health care provider drug distribution. The present invention includes a unique form of drug packaging in combination with a computerized drug management software system. Low unit of measure quantities of a drug are packaged in an enclosure, such as a sealed plastic bag, and the bag is preferably marked with a lot number and a related lot number bar code for tracking the lot from which the drugs within that particular package were taken. The package may also include an expiration date and related expiration date bar code for tracking the expiration date of the drugs within the package. The package may also include an National Drug Code ("NDC") number and related NDC number bar code for identifying the variety of drug packaged within the enclosure. The package may also include further information regarding its contents.
Once the drugs are packaged, they may be warehoused at a drug distribution center. When a health care provider requires drugs the drug distribution center delivers the low unit measure packages in accordance with the hospital's current needs. Once the low unit measure packages arrive at the hospital, the bar codes may be scanned by the hospital pharmacy to be automatically logged into the hospital's drug information management system in electronic communication with the drug distributor's management information system to track exactly what drugs and quantities arrived at the hospital in each shipment. Furthermore, the bar codes on the packages may be used to track the drugs that are placed in each drug dispensing machine at each patient care area within the hospital. The hospital's drug management information system will thus know the items placed in each drug dispensing machine in the hospital, including drug type, lot numbers, and expiration dates.
In addition, the present invention provides a computerized electronic interface between the hospital software system which tracks the drug distribution within the hospital and the drug distributor's software system at the drug distribution center warehouse. By enabling these two systems to communicate with each other, the system of the present invention provides a complete drug distribution management system from the warehouse to the patient care area within the hospital.